That’s David Koch: indefatigable, imperturbable

David Koch’s contract with Seven is said to be worth $1 million a year but when his Sunrise gig ends he will be ready | LISTEN

Sunrise host David Koch has his finger in many pies including business, publishing and charity. ‘Everything I do I love doing so it’s not like work’. Picture: Adam Taylor

David Koch has just stepped away from 3½ hours of live television, but you wouldn’t know it.

After walking off set at Seven’s Martin Place studio, he has crammed his tall frame into a tiny recording booth off the main ­studio for The Australian’s Behind the Media podcast.

He is taller than you think, ­bigger than you think, and if you get just one word to describe him, the one to choose is imperturbable. Koch, 62, is a good fit for ­himself. And a man who doesn’t get a lot of sleep.

“I like being busy. Simple as that and everything I do I love doing so it’s not like work. Lib (wife Libby) and I are empty ­nesters. I’ve got grandkids, our kids are out of home so we like being involved in different projects. And I like building things.”

Koch doesn’t sleep much not just because of the Sunrise early morning starts but because he has maintained a rich and productive life away from morning television: his many and varied public campaigns, chairmanship of Port ­Adelaide AFL club, charities, his finance columns for News Corp metro papers and his “family small business” Pinstripe Media, which specialises in personal finance and small business.

Why does he bother? His ­contract with Seven is said to be worth $1 million a year and it doesn’t seem as if the finance guy (he started life as an accountant) is any longer motivated by money. The answer is surprising.

“I’ve never trusted media for a living. I go in two-year contract cycles and I never assume my ­contract is being renewed.”

Hold on. Is David Koch, No 1 in breakfast at Sunrise saying that the fate that befell rival Today star Lisa Wilkinson last year when Nine didn’t renew her contract could happen to him?

“Absolutely. Absolutely. It could happen to anyone. A lot of people live in a bubble and think they’re bigger than the brand or they’re bigger than the network or the show and you never are. Everybody is expendable.”

Sounds like good advice. Maybe his rival on Today Karl ­Stefanovic, and brother Peter, caught out by an Uber driver ­bemoaning their lot during a late night trip, could take note.

Koch lets out a strange “ahhhhh”, which translates as “I have seen your trap and avoided it — but here’s an intelligent sounding answer anyway’’.

“Everyone in TV is different and everyone adapts differently. Everyone has a different personality. Everyone has a different stage of life. Everyone has different values and just be who you are.

“You can get home from a day on TV and think you are the best thing since sliced bread. And your kids really don’t give a toss.”

It’s no secret Koch wanted more time off this year and he got it by building extra leave into his contract. Seven gave it to him after he gave two years’ notice.

Journalists, he believes, should build things. “Anyone can give commentary. It actually takes a bit of nous to get involved and make a difference. What we do on TV is a bit of a bullshit job. It is not saving lives in hospitals.”

Thus, once, for Melbourne’s Good Friday Appeal, Koch was at the Royal Children’s Hospital when he met a patient who reminded him of her daughters. “There was this a lovely girl there aged 15 pulling her mechanical heart along behind her, so full of optimism. She walked away and the doctor said ‘she’ll die waiting for an organ donation’.’’

Our organ donor system, the doctor told Koch, was one of the world’s worst. “It made me so mad because I thought this is almost un-Australian so I got involved.”

That helped to produce a blueprint for an authority convincing enough for prime minister Kevin Rudd, the Health Department and Treasury to back it and the Organ and Tissue Authority Advisory Council was created. Koch served as chairman until 2015.

Then there’s the youth centre he and Libby established with ­Father Chris Riley from Youth off the Streets in Macquarie Fields after riots in that southwestern Sydney suburb (which Sunrise covered).

“It’s a youth centre but also has a high school attached to it for kids who dropped out of the traditional education system. The stories that come out of their centre of kids against all odds rebuilding their life is just so inspirational.’’

In the 1980s, Koch helped to popularise personal finance ­journalism, founding Personal ­Investment magazine. “Personal Investment’s design I based on Cosmopolitan and Cleo. We had sealed sections. We had zipouts.”

A sealed section in Personal ­Investment magazine? “101 top tax tips to get a bigger refund. If you can seal lust, you can seal greed. It’s a basic human emotion.”

Koch trained as an accountant and got a cadetship on The Australian because a friend on his course showed one of his assignments to her husband, Bryan Frith, business editor of The Australian.

“My life is full of sheer arse ­opportunities like that. My dad, who was a business person, had this great saying: ‘Have enough confidence in yourself to give anything a go. But if it doesn’t work out, have enough confidence to go and do something else’.”

When asked a probing question Kochie answers with a laugh. But he still answers.

So has John Howard forgiven him? “For the joke? No, probably not.”

In 2004, when Howard was prime minister Koch read out a reader joke during a daily joke segment. “Yeah, that 60 seconds every day would get me into more trouble than the 180 minutes of the rest of the show.

I won’t repeat the joke, but you can find it on YouTube. It involved the prime minister, his wife Janette and opposition leader Kim Beazley. And a penis. Here Koch objects. OK, the word penis is not mentioned, but it is implied. A furious Howard banned Sunrise. At the time, it was a big thing.

“He still isn’t best pleased with me not just because of the joke, but he still blames me for Kevin Rudd, which I find a bit strange. We’ve discussed it in short terms in the past but you wouldn’t say we’re best friends now.”

Sunrise gave Kevin Rudd and Joe Hockey a weekly platform where both debated politics. Viewers tuned in and some think it helped Rudd topple Howard for the prime ministership.

But good came from those jokes. Royalties from Kochie’s joke books go to helping fund an orphanage in Baghia in the hills of East Timor he established with Libby.

“Another person I don’t actually get on with too well is Alexander Downer and at the time when he was foreign minister he was trying to screw East Timor over the Sunrise oil thing which is only now being settled.

“I thought it was just a bastard act to do that for one of our closest neighbours who had been one of our great friends during the war who we sold out to the Indonesians.

Koch was 45 and presenting finance on Sunrise when in 2002 he was asked to co-host for three months while presenter Chris Reason battled cancer.

He made peace with the ungodly hour and took the job permanently after Reason didn’t return on medical advice. Koch took the job on the proviso he and Mel Doyle and executive ­producer Adam Boland could be themselves and lighten up the stiff news program.

The audience was about 10 per cent of Nine’s rival Today.

Ratings were depressing everywhere but in regional Queensland. “I think they got our sense of humour.”

The Sunrise format had and still has three foundations to complement the madhouse of viewers’ breakfasts each day. “People want the news of the day, something to talk about at work or school — and a smile.”

He is resolute Sunrise can cover any story in its own way.

But one recent story that showed the program’s limitations was a controversial panel on ­Aboriginal welfare and at-risk children that suggested taking vulnerable children away from problem parents. The program was denounced as racist, complaints were made and a protest ensued outside the Sunrise windows on to Martin Place. The program shielded the protest from viewers and Koch hosted a follow-up panel in an attempt to redress the damage.

He says: “Sometimes you get caught because of the structure of the program. I think it was a fair point that protesters were making and we never hid from that and rectified it later. ‘’

The follow-up panel was chaired by Koch with experts he organised via his work with indigenous communities he knew through his role as chairman of Port Adelaide and through the Koch Centre of Youth in Macquarie Fields. That panel “really brought the issue on to a commercial television stage, which probably hadn’t happened before”.

The only way you can get through 3½ hours of live television each weekday is by being normal, Kochie says.

“You cannot pretend to be something you’re not. It’s unlike any other news and current affairs format where you could be the biggest dick in the world and get away with it because you know you’re just on for a few minutes and it’s all tightly scripted.

“The average Australian has an incredibly good bullshit ­detector.’’

Koch says the future of Sunrise will be “transition”.

“I am not going to do Sunrise forever. Everybody has a use-by date and I’m realistic. Some ­people can get scared of the future and I’m not scared at all.”